


Silence is Golden

by Listless_Songbird



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blatant Misuse of the Scientific Method, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Logan Needs A Hug, Panic Attacks, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 14:18:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16286204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Listless_Songbird/pseuds/Listless_Songbird
Summary: Logan feels like when he speaks none of the other sides truly pay attention, and so he creates an experiment to determine what the optimum amount of words that he could speak a day would be.





	Silence is Golden

**Author's Note:**

> Alrighty! it is completed! So this fic is a rewrite and expansion of a previous work by the same title, Im really proud of how far Ive come in my writing since then, so I hope you all enjoy. 
> 
> The WIP title was- Logan's a scientific dumbass and really needs a hug: Remastered

Logan collapsed back into the desk chair, letting his breath out in a long sigh. Loosening his tie, he put his head in his hands, closing his eyes. No matter how many time it happened it still hurt when he looked up in the middle of explaining something, or just indulging in one of his ‘monologues’ as Roman described them. Only to be met with a blank stares and strained smiles. And it wasn’t like he was unaware that he spoke too much, he was well aware that he would get started on a topic and end up going down irrelevant tangents. Which would bore the person he was talking to until they weren’t paying attention to him when he finally ended up at the answer to the question they had asked.

It was an understandable reaction, attention is a finite resource. There are only so many things the brain can process in any given situation and he usually ends up selfishly using it all for his own tangents. He knew that this was the case, and so it shouldn’t cause the sudden pit in his stomach when the logical conclusion of his actions come to pass.

He was failing his purpose as a side on two accounts whenever it happened. Firstly by allowing his own base desires to control him so much as to completely disregard past evidence of what would happen and just start rambling again like an idiot. And secondly by falling prey to his emotions in response to something that he  _ knows _ is going to happen.

He was the Logical side. He was Thomas’ center for deductive and inductive reasoning. He was supposed to be able to analyze the facts presented to Thomas impartially and be able to come up with a reasonable course of action. 

If he failed so much at doing the bare minimum of his job when it came to his own actions, how was anyone supposed to trust in his ability to help Thomas?

What he needed was a way to find the best amount of time, or perhaps the best amount of words to convey his points. The correct time frame in which he could give the others the answers they sought without boring them to the point of justified inattention.

What he needed was a way to go about this, a structure. Something that was impartial and had a set of guidelines for him to follow, as he had proven many times over that he was utterly incapable of regulating for himself. What he needed was an experiment. 

Logan sat up in his chair and took a steadying breath in. This was something that he knew he could do. First thing he needed to create a hypothesis, how to word it though?

Logan pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote the variables at the top, how much he spoke was the independent variable, and the retention of the others attention would be the dependant variable. 

‘When the amount of words I speak decreases, the others will retain more information from my answers.’

There, concise and to the point. Exactly what he needed to get better at. Next he drew up a chart, with the amount of words he limits himself to that day in one column and the others attention in the other. He would measure it by how many blank stares, if one of them attempted to leave a conversation early, rolling eyes, etc. He wasn’t sure how exactly he would quantify the reactions into data, but this experiment was equal parts quantitative and qualitative. 

As much as he wanted to immediately cut down on the amount of words he spoke, an abrupt decrease in words would most likely cause concern from the others and eliminate the chance to gain objective data from this experiment. What he needed to do was steadily decrease the amount of words he spoke until the reactions of the others hit a bearable level. 

There seemed to be no visible change during the first week of his experiment as he progressed from 300 words down to 150. The next week he decreased slower, from 150 down to 80 and he finally began to see some progress. The others seemed to be focusing on him slightly more, and appeared to pay closer attention to him when he spoke. He slowed down his decreasing of words again, and when he hit 60 things seemed to be leveling out. 

The reactions of the others had not changed much from 70 to 65 to 60 and so Logan felt confident enough to establish 60 as his limit to what he spoke in a day.

With his new limit in place Logan felt much surer of himself and his ability to do his job for Thomas. He found a problem, approached it from a logical and structured point of view, and came up with the optimum solution. 

Sometimes Logan would forget himself and accidentally use up all his words during one point of the day or another, and would be forced to retreat back to his room so that he didn’t overspend his words. But after a few more days of reclusion it became a habit just to bite his tongue and nod along to what someone else was saying instead of voicing his agreement.

He still kept notes on the others reactions around him, and made sure to not fall too far below the bar of 60 words because the others appeared more distracted for some reason and that was also not optimal. But it was easier now that he found himself instinctively tallying up the words he was saying them.

 

* * *

 

He would have continued with his limit indefinitely, but one day when he was summoned dow to do a video he slipped up. He was assigned to role of exposition again, and between that and the familiar format he found himself slipping back into his old way of speaking, temporarily forgetting his experiment in favor of his excitement over the topic they were discussing.

As soon as the video ended however, everything came crashing back. 

Quickly casing his mind back over how much he had spoken Logan began to panic when he was unable to remember how many words he had spoken! His breathing was getting faster and faster and the room felt like it was closing in around him.

He had been making good progress, his experiment had been a success. After all the others hadn’t said anything, and they had been paying attention when he spoke again, so that meant they were thankful for the change, right? And now he ruined it, they must hate him, he had been doing something good for once and he had ruined it.

Ignoring the others he quickly sunk out, locking the door to his room, and heading straight to his desk. He had to record this he had to make sure that his failure was marked, because this was going to ruin his data. This was a disgusting outlier but he couldn’t even remember how much of one it was. He had forgotten he had lost track of his count and now, he just didn’t know. At least, he didn’t know quantitatively how much he had fucked up, but qualitatively? That was fairly easy to reason out, they hated him, he ruined it and so they hated him.

He tried to write that in his chart but his hand were shaking and his vision was blurry and he still wasn’t breathing right. He tried to focus, to pull himself back together and take a few steadying breaths, but he was interrupted when he heard a knock on his door. 

“Logan? Are you in there? Are you alright? You left so suddenly after the video, did something happen?” Patton’s voice called out from behind the door, his voice audibly worried. Logan opened his mouth, and tried to reply, to give Patton reassurance so that he would leave, but the words lodged themselves in his throat. He couldn’t get them out. He tried again, but nothing happened, maybe Patton would just assume he was asleep.

The pit in his stomach continued to drop as Patton kept asking if he was alright. He wouldn’t leave why didn’t he just leave Logan to his failure. Logan tried to speak once again, but nothing came out, and suddenly he began to silently laugh. He had ruined the day once by talking, and now he was ruining it again by not being able to. 

The laughter vanished as quickly had come, leaving behind a pit in his chest that was growing and he couldn’t breathe around it. His breaths once again becoming abrupt and choppy, curling into himself on the floor. The floor? How did he get on the floor he was on his chair wasn’t he and now- and now he was choking, his senses fading in and out, as he struggled to stay aware of his surroundings

 

“We have to get in-“   
“-wont open-“   
“I can feel his painc! Ro-“

“I don’t-”   
“-do something-“

 

He heard a crash, as his door flew open and the other sides burst in. he tried to get up, he tried to do anything, but nothing was working. He nearly jumped when he felt Virgil gently touch the back of his hand, before guiding it to his own chest.

“It going to be alright Logan, can you match my breathing? There we go, in, and out, that right, can you do that again?” Virgil kept his voice calm, making sure to keep his breathing steady as he slowly coaxed Logan into his lap. When he felt Logan’s breathing begin to steady slightly, he shifted Logan slightly so that he could pull him into a hug. He sat like that for a bit, gently rubbing up and down Logan’s back before looking up to see what the others were doing.

Patton was sitting on the edge of Logan’s bed, having straightened the covers and pillows, looking like he was only holding it together, because it would only make Logan worse if he fell apart. Roman was over by Logan’s desk, shifting some pages around slightly growing more pale and shaken the longer he looked at whatever was there.

Logan was slumping further and further into Vigil’s arms, and his breathing had completely slowed, but was still more shallow than it should be. Virgil gently patted Logan’s shoulder to get his attention,

“Hey, let’s get you to bed, panic attacks drain a ton of energy and the best thing to do right now is to take a nap, can you do that for me?” Logan didn’t really give any indication one way or another, but he stood when Virgil did and let himself be guided down to his bed. Patton gently pulled to covers up and Virgil brushed a strand of hair out of his face, and relaxed somewhat as he saw Logan go lax and his breathing even out.

He turned to Roman, who hadn’t come over while they had been helping Logan, and shot him a questioning look. Roman looked completely shaken and was holding the papers that he had found gingerly, like they could explode any moment. Roman shook his head slightly and motioned to the door, leading the three of them out into the hall. When he had gently shut the door behind him Virgil turned to Roman,

“What did you find?” Roman let out a shaky breath and handed the pages over for them to look at. They were the chart and notes that Logan had been taking for weeks, culminating in the last entry of  

 

| #? | THEY HATE ME | 

 

Patton collapsed into himself, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, clutching the final page in his hand. Virgil sucked in a sharp breath and shut his eyes against the tears that were forming. They should have said something. They should have commented on it the first time they noticed, but they hadn’t known how to bring it up. They should have said something,  _ anything  _ that might have stopped it from reaching this point. Virgil’s eyes opened when he felt Roman’s hand rest on his shoulder. Roman stare at Virgil straight on,

“We’re going to fix this. I don’t know how yet, but were going to fix this.” Turning to reach a hand down to Patton to help him back up, he said it again. “We are going to fix this.” 

Virgil took another breath in in and straightened his shoulders nodding once. He turned back and gently opened the door to Logan’s room again, carefully making his way over to the bed and sitting down at the foot of the mattress, just watching as Logan continued to breath steadily in and out, reassuring himself that Logan was in fact still there. Patton sat at the front, and gently began carding his fingers through Logan’s hair. Roman joined Virgil at the foot of the bed, still holding on to the papers.

Virgil gently took them from Roman’s hands and set the on the floor, replacing them with his hand, holding onto Roman like a lifeline. When Logan woke up they could talk. When Logan woke up they would do better.


End file.
